


Edge

by hellsinki



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Experimental, Hallucinations, M/M, Psychoanalysis, depressive tension, elliptical austerity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 23:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsinki/pseuds/hellsinki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is someone inside his head, the world is coming to an end, and Kaidan is standing on the edge of the galaxy, contemplating his choices. But when Shepard asks him for a favor, can he do it? Can he hear him over the static noises in his head? And if he did, would it change anything? Or would it be too late?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  * After the Ardat-Yakshi Monastery Mission (in which Kaidan watches firsthand the transformation of an Ardat-Yakshi into a Banshee, ‘really doges a bullet’ and invites Shepard afterwards to lunch on the Citadel for a ‘sanity check’)



The important thing is to never look back; what’s done is done; what’s past is past; who’s dead is dead. Mythologizing death is for artists and sheltered people who have either lost contact with the real world completely or are just too afraid to look at it and take it for what it is; Kaidan, of course, belonged to neither group. For one thing, his most artistic work was a biotic charge that lifted up three enemies at the same time and smashed them together mid-air; while he didn’t deny that there were multitude ways to kill and some were more convenient than the others, his firm belief in principles did not allow him to ascribe aesthetic beauty to killing. It was just something he had to do and once he started getting a kick out of it, that was when he knew he had fallen off the deep end.

For another, Kaidan had been in constant touch with reality. It was perilous not to, considering the fact that he was in the Alliance, for a time had been in charge of a biotic division, and now served under _the_ commander Shepard to stop the galactic annihilation. If you forget, even for just one second, where you stand and how you perceive the world, someone could die and their death would be on your hands.

No, Kaidan had no misconception about death. You lose friends, but you’ve learned how to move on. It’s very much like your first kill; and the second, and the third and every other one after that. It never stops; it never gets easier; you won’t forget. But you learn how to keep your head up and your steps strong; if you don’t look down you won’t get dizzy. If you don’t look at the corpses at your feet you won’t feel nauseous. It does not mean you lose your awareness of their presence; you can still smell the decaying flesh in the air and feel their lump crushed beneath your steps. But it helps you to keep your cool, to remain focused until you get the job done, to persevere until you either die or survive. And yet…

Kaidan sighed and rubbed his hand over the weary muscles of his face. There was always a yet. But what else could you expect from living in the world of dialectics?

“Don’t get philosophical in bed, Kaidan. There is a time and place for that, you know, and this is not it.”

And yet…

“If I thought it would change anything…”

He turned on his side and buried his face into the pillow; it didn’t smell of anything in particular, and yet…

“Yeah.”


	2. Chapter 2

  * After the ex-Cerberus Scientists Mission (in which Vega saves Kaidan’s ass from the attack of a phantom as Kaidan had been busy repairing one of the AA guns, and later on Kaidan asks Shepard about an insight into Cerberus but does not get a satisfying answer)



Lieutenant James Vega had an edge about him. Edge might not be the right word, he was too evasive for that, but every time Kaidan talked to him, he got a vibe from him that was not exactly nervous but there was an energy to it that couldn’t be excitement. Maybe it was anticipation or hostility; either way, the energy was too negative for Kaidan to ascribe some friendly quality to it. All he could say was that Vega did not like his company. That one time Kaidan went down to the Shuttle Bay to snoop around (EDI had told him Shepard was not in there, but she had also told him that he had been there earlier that day.), Vega hadn’t even turned around to greet him. He kept playing with the weapons on his desk, giving his questions curt, dismissive replies. Kaidan remembered the look Vega had given him back on earth. ‘Do you know the commander?’, he had said. There had been that edge to him then. While Kaidan had kept his eyes on the retreating form of Shepard with a look of nostalgic longing about him, Vega had kept his on him the entire time. His edge had been especially sharp at that moment, cutting through Kaidan’s reverie. When Kaidan had finally turned his head toward him, Vega had been slow to conceal the hostile expression on his face. ‘Is there a problem, Lieutenant?’ Vega had just shaken his head and walked off, and later Kaidan had come to the conclusion that he had probably imagined the hostility in his eyes.

But the edge was now present, as sharp as a krogan’s teeth, around Vega’s hazel eyes, like electric fences that keep away unwelcomed trespassers; the gaze was almost…accusing. Kaidan might not have been able to rationalize it, but he felt…

‘Do you fancy the commander?’, he felt like saying. He didn’t. For one thing, Liara was with them in the Mess Hall, engrossed in a datapad as she played around with her food, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be hearing them. For another, Vega had just saved his ass earlier that day and throwing this in his face before getting even with him for the life debt did not feel right. Yet, uneasiness settled in his stomach and he couldn’t help but return Vega’s look with the same level of antagonism.

“Is there a problem, Lieutenant?”

His encounters with Vega were now nothing but rippling circles of déjà vu that expanded in the air until they faded into nothingness. It was a constancy, but one he could never get comfortable with. He was used to having people from varied species hate his guts (especially the turians; it was as if they caught on his apprehensiveness and then turned it into a full-on aggression directed at him), but the thought of having a partner that would stab him in the back unnerved him; not that Vega was exactly a back-stabber kind of guy, what with his utter failure at subtlety, but still…

Vega shrugged but his gaze did not soften. If he were a biotic, he would be sending off blue sparks right now.

“Maybe.”

His answer surprised Kaidan. He was not expecting Vega to acknowledge the hostility between them. What changed?

Liara, sensing the bad air, politely excused herself from the table to give them some privacy. Vega’s eyes followed her until she disappeared behind the curve that led to the elevator. Kaidan waited for him to speak first.

“You’re an imbécil.”

Kaidan raised one of his brows, slightly confused but mostly amused at the choice of words which had been said in a deliberate thick accent as if to emphasize its intensity. Exactly who was the imbecile here?

“What are you on about, Vega?”, he kept his tone neutral just in case Vega was, for once, in a talking mood, and Kaidan could get something out of him.

“You would have known that by now, if you hadn’t been an imbécil.”

He left after that, and even though Kaidan was now dying to know what was going on, he had enough dignity so as not to shout after the bulky lieutenant for a clarification; especially when that said clarification was about his state of being an imbecile.

“It’s like everybody knows something but you.”, he said to his distorted reflection on the back of his shiny spoon.

“It’s because you’re an _imbécil_.”, replied his reflection with a self-depreciating smirk.

Kaidan threw the spoon away and massaged his throbbing temple. A migraine was coming on. 


	3. Chapter 3

  * During the Rannoch Mission (in which Kaidan has not accompanied Shepard on his mission and has found plenty of time to recline in an armchair in the Starboard Observation Lounge and reminisce about the past)



It’s not as easy as they have made it sound, and you always realize it too late. Sure, don’t look down, that’s what they keep telling you, don’t think about it, you’re not really 2000 feet above the ground, you can do this, just don’t look down and you’ll be fine.

_Fine._

Kaidan couldn’t remember earth; it wasn’t that he had been away from home for too long or that his memory was generally bad (on the contrary, actually); rather, he was purposefully blocking the memory. The name buzzed at the back of his mind like a broken record, but the images that were normally associated with it came out all warped and faded. It was a trick his last psychiatrist had taught him: the art of filtering out unwanted memories. For a time he had liked it because it had been a struggle to master it, but then it came to him like second nature, his terrible experiences were automatically filtered even without his conscious intervention, and that was when the art became a nuisance, at times an adversary even. During his last visit with his psychiatrist, she had told him that he was fine; that now that he had learned how to block the bad memories, he would be right on the way to complete recovery. The thing was, more terrible events kept happening, replacing the ones he had shoved into a gray box at the far recesses of his mind, and the more he practiced the _art_ , the less he felt fine. It was like a drug, he realized one day; addictive, and like all kinds of addiction, probably not healthy. Sure, it helped him get promotions faster than any of his comrades, but at the cost of his humanity. They called him ‘that biotic kid with heart of steel’; when he lost his partner during an operation, the partner he _loved_ , he didn’t stop to mourn. That could come later, he had told himself, after the mission was done. But the time for mourning never came; he got a promotion immediately afterwards and as more terrible things kept happening during his missions and as he kept blocking every one of them, the memory of Eileen was completely forgotten. That was when he stopped practicing the trick. You make a choice, you fuck up, and you take responsibility for it. You can’t cheat forever; at some time it will stop helping you and you’ll be left alone down in the gutter. It’s the worst of all places to be, somewhere at the back of your mind, alone with your thoughts and regrets, with no hope of ever coming back to the surface. But then…

Then Shepard had died.

And it was back to square one, all over again. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If life had ever taught Kaidan anything, it was that any low point could get lower if you weren't fast enough to quit while you still could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a little part of Kaidan's character is my construct; the rest, including other characters, are Kaidan's.

  * Immediately after the Horizon Mission (in which Tali is not the only one who gets drunk)



Everyone has their own kind of poison; a special something to turn to when things go to hell and try to drag you down into it with them. Garrus would turn to his ever faithful sniper and enter into a shooting contest with either himself or Shepard (Shepard was the only one Garrus would consider as a true rival); Liara loved to drown herself into prothean history until all voices around her started to sound prothean. For Steve, it was a two-hour flight over scenic landscapes, while James would rather spend the whole day indoors, doing pull-ups until his whole body was soaked and glistening with sweats. Kaidan loved his books, as boring as it might have sounded to others, and sometimes he would practice the finer arts of biotics to get his mind off things. Shepard, though…Shepard was a traditionalist and as such, just stuck to his vodka. Not that he indulged in it very often. Only two times had Kaidan seen the commander drunk, and even at those times he had been conscious enough to make coherent sentences. The first time was after Virmire and the second was after Thessia, just a few days ago. On both accounts Kaidan had found Shepard lying on his stomach on the cold floor, his Alliance uniform discarded in the far end of his cabin, his white tunic wrinkled and ridden half way up his back, legs wide apart, feet still inside his military boots, eyes closed and face flushed, contorted as if in pain or discomfort. “Commander, can I help you with something?”, Kaidan would always ask in a gentle tone. The first time Shepard had said no, that he would be fine in a while, he just felt hot and the floor felt cold and nice under his heated-up flesh. The second time, he had said tentatively, “Yes, but not now; I’ll tell you when the time’s right.”

Today was the third time Shepard had gotten drunk. He was in the same position, on the floor, with his face pressed into the crook of his arm. His bottle of vodka, half-empty, placed within his arm’s reach; his dog tags, turned around, resting on his back. He was lying so utterly still as if the time had stopped. Kaidan had to strain his eyes to follow the barely visible rise and fall of his shoulders to make sure that he hadn’t just walked into a screenshot of a tragicomic movie.

‘Commander…’, but his ritual question was cut off by Shepard’s rough, slightly muffled voice.

‘Kaidan. Kaidan, I have to tell you something. Before it’s too late. Are you listening, Kaidan?’

Shepard’s face was still hidden behind his arm. There was something quite absurd and surreal about Shepard’s prone posture. You know what they say about fallen angels? Or disgraced heroes? Shepard was only one half of the antithesis, and as such, made a parody of it: fallen, but not quite an angel; a hero, but not yet disgraced.

‘Of course, Shepard. What is it? You can tell me anything, you know that. But let me…let me help you up first.’

Without waiting for Shepard’s consent, Kaidan put his hands under his armpits and hauled him up, letting him lean against the bed; Shepard turned his face away as if embarrassed. Kaidan grabbed his chin roughly, in a moment of utter insubordination, and took in Shepard’s face.

‘Alright. I just…’

‘Shepard…’, the name came out as a gasp.

The sight that greeted him threw him. Shepard’s normally clear blue eyes were purplish, puffy, with red rings beneath them. His face was still wet, sticky under Kaidan’s palm.

He must have been crying for a long time; that, or his eyes were terribly allergic to tears.

Shepard took his hand and gently removed it from his face. There was a touch of desperation in his purple eyes, a shade of urgency, overtones of need, that rendered Kaidan breathless and mute. 

‘Listen. Kaidan. There isn’t enough time. You should know that I…since the first time I met you…there was something, I felt something. Kaidan I felt something for you.’

Kaidan had been shot on numerous accounts, most of which effectively absorbed by either his biotic field or his armor. But there was this one time when he had not been so lucky. The bullet had hit him in the abdomen, the third worst place he could have gotten shot, and the pain was excruciating. He had thought he was going to die, he almost passed out from the sheer pain alone, which had ringed into his ears as if, now that he thought about it, a banshee had grabbed a hold of his head and squashed it between its claws. Somehow, he felt the same kind of pain in his chest now, around his heart. It felt as if the bullet was still there, coming back to life, sending shockwaves through his never-really healed tissues. 

Only, there was no bleeding this time, and no kind of medi-gel could stop the pain.

‘Commander. Shepard. What…what are you saying?’

Shepard was avoiding eye contact, a tendency that could cost him his life anywhere outside this cabin, with anyone but Kaidan. The vodka on his breath reminded Kaidan just how drunk Shepard was, the absurdity of his well-articulated words was more reason to disregard them as drunken confessions which, irrespective of their being true or not, would be all forgotten with the coming hangover next morning.

Kaidan was too hung up on reality to have any room for illusion. He was the kind of soldier who believed if you’ve taken enough beating to the head, you might as well start bleeding.

Shepard was no longer crying but the teardrops caught in his eyelashes spilled from the corner of his eyes and slid down his cheek every time he blinked. It was as if the blood was there, pooling on the ground, but the body had been removed; like a crime case with too much evidence but no victim.

It was a dead end case.

‘Kaidan, I…I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. But I do know that I need it; whatever it is, I need it. I need _you_.’

One could easily detect the honesty in that last sentence, if one chose to; if one were not Kaidan and thus had not shared a steak sandwich with Shepard on the Citadel, while trying to muster enough courage to ask his commander out. One would so easily believe Shepard if one had not been…

‘But you…you rejected me.’

Shepard’s flushed, tear-stricken face contorted, in shame or regret or maybe it was just an unconscious reaction to Kaidan’s pathetic, broken tone. He didn’t avert his eyes, though. They were more red than blue, maybe even glowing in the dusky shadows circling them, reminding Kaidan of their artificiality; reminding him of Cerberus, of betrayal, of pain; but more than anything, reminding him of death; Shepard’s.

_‘It’s me, Kaidan.’_

_‘But you’re dead.’_

_‘But I came back.’_

_‘But I mourned you. For two years. It’s a long time. For mourning.’_

_‘So you moved on?’_

The past was right here between them, reflected in their eyes, trapped behind their eyelids, inside their skulls. Like a tumor spreading through your body and infecting you one thousand brain cells a second; there is no escaping from it. And they were not even trying to escape; maybe they should have. At least then, they would have gone their own separate ways instead of standing on unstable grounds now, staring at each other point-blank.

‘I made a mistake. Kaidan please, listen. I was trying to be a…gentleman.’, his voice broke into a dry laugh, dropping to an octave of hoarse, breathless mess that was almost too painful to hear. ‘But I just want to be selfish this once; with you. We can make this work. I know we can.’

Something was wrong with Shepard’s confession and it was not its intensity; Kaidan could always blame Shepard’s uncharacteristic dramatic behavior on alcohol. What didn’t feel right was not even Shepard’s hand resting awkwardly on top of his or his bloodshot eyes that looked as if they belonged on someone else’s face. Kaidan wondered if Shepard was too drunk to remember what had caused him to drink in the first place or that he was just that shameless.

One could never be too sure with a man like Shepard.

‘Shepard, I don’t think this is the right time for this…talk; it hasn’t been more than three hours since Miranda…and you’re already...’

Kaidan hadn’t known Miranda; he just knew Shepard had loved her. Her death, though, had hit him hard because he had been there and also because Shepard was devastated. But right now, watching as the wrinkles deepened on Shepard’s forehead, as a film of tears covered those red eyes and those full lips trembled in suppressed agony, Kaidan felt lightheaded with a terrible kind of satisfaction. It was cruel, but it was only fair. It was only fair because Kaidan didn’t know any better and he was sick of always being the one dangling upside-down in the Zero-G experience of Shepard’s existential angst.

‘You’re right, Kaidan. I’m an asshole. But I’m a no-quitter.’, he took a shaky breath, eyes looking over Kaidan’s shoulder. ‘I…I lied to you…about me and Miranda; we’d already broken up before we had our _date_ at Apollo’s café. I…’

You have been always scared of heights. You’ve had nightmares in which you had found yourself on the roof of a 2000-foot skyscraper, lying on the ground with your hands scratching the asphalt so hard your fingers started to bleed; you were too far away from the edge but you were afraid if you so much as raised your head, the world was going to turn up-side down and you’d free fall with the velocity of 200 feet per second. All it would take for your body to hit the sidewalk and turn into a bloody mess was 10 seconds. Kaidan couldn’t count past the tenth second. Dead men don’t count.  

‘You lied to me.’ It was an accusation laden with astonishment. He tried to laugh but his throat felt raw, as if someone had pushed their omni-tool down his mouth and fucked up his vocal chords. What came out instead was a hoarse barking sound that startled Shepard. Kaidan took some kind of solace in that. ‘Why?’

‘Because I wanted to…protect you.’ There was hesitance in his voice, as if he had anticipated Kaidan’s response. Or maybe because even he himself had found his excuse too ridiculous to even attempt to make it sound convincing.

‘Protect me? From what? From you? Come on Shepard, you can do better than this!’, Kaidan wanted to yell, but the pointlessness of it stopped him. What good would it have done, for either of them, if Kaidan had lost his temper and stated the obvious? Making Shepard feel guilty for his selfishness sounded quite absurd when one remembered the sacrifices he had made, and would do, to save the galaxy. Kaidan was just one insignificant incident in the whole scheme of things, one little biotic whose death would be mourned but hardly remembered. And yet…

‘I know what you’re thinking, Kaidan. You have every right to be angry at me, but I had good reason to do what I did.’

Kaidan turned away but kept his silence; he promised himself to take part in Garrus’ kill count contest on the next mission; for now he would just bottle his rage and humor Shepard.

‘When I…when we broke up, she…she cried. I wasn’t…god damn it, I never wanted to…but I had to. It was for the better…Kaidan, you’ve mourned me before. You know how it is, to get over the loss of the one you love. You’re the only one who does.’

It was one of those _Shepardian_ logics that just flew over Kaidan’s head. Those logics that you could never find in any school textbooks, and were firmly discouraged to adhere to, unless you had a shitload of luck and your level of charisma was so high you could practically charm the armor off a krogan warlord. Shepard had both the luck and the charisma, and that was the problem. He had never thought about the authenticity of his system of logic because it had always worked for him. It was always left to people like Kaidan with a firm head on their shoulders to stay around and clean up the mess long after Shepard had gone off to enchant a salarian councilor.

‘What about Steve? He’s mourned for someone he loved, too.’

It was the first relevant thing that he could think of, while most of his thoughts were scattered around Shepard’s enigmatic personality. It was only after he had said it that he realized his mistake. He was basically telling him that there were other people beside himself that Shepard could have a chance with. It wasn’t like Kaidan to be unselfish or dumb where it mattered the most and he almost wished he could take back his words.

But it wasn’t like Shepard to be unselfish or dumb where it mattered the most, either.

‘No, he hasn’t mourned for _me._ That’s different. You’ve learned how to get over _me_ , to move on. I realized…if you had done it once, you could do it again.’

It was funny, how Kaidan suddenly felt like crying. Out of frustration or grief, he wasn’t sure. Shepard was so callous about matters of his death that it both pained and infuriated Kaidan. This was classic Shepard, the way he had been a year ago on Horizon, talking about his resurrection as if it was a normal phenomenon, his tone a matter-of-fact kind of been-there-done-that that had driven Kaidan back to the clutches of insanity.

You should never meet an iconic hero, let alone get close to one. They all come with a kind of darkness about them that has a strong gravitational pull that sucks you in deeper the longer you stay around and stare into their abyss. Shepard’s darkness was the most dangerous for it was the most attractive. Even guys like Kaidan whose motto had been ‘integrity first, everything else later or never’ would eventually fall into it. All the struggle before the fall was just a fool’s pleading as the barrel kept pushing into their temple and the time ticking by.

‘Shepard, I don’t...’

‘I _need_ you to do it, Kaidan. I need you.’

‘I’m…I’m sorry, Shepard. I can’t. I just can’t. Please.”

Pathetic, because at that moment it was all Kaidan was. His throat was burning and the urge to cry had never been this strong before; maybe at that time when Shepard had died and two long years after that and then back on Horizon when he had told Shepard to fuck off…but this time was different because he wasn’t going to cry. It was just an urge that burned and kept on burning until Kaidan’s whole being was on fire.

Shepard’s eyes suddenly cleared, as if someone had thrown icy water on him and brought him out of his stupor only to tell him the Reapers had destroyed the whole galaxy while he had been drinking himself into oblivion. It was a terrible stare and Kaidan, unconsciously, took some steps back. 

‘Of course; I can’t…I can’t force you into it. I just thought…’

Kaidan was almost at the door and Shepard had not moved an inch, only stood up. Kaidan just wanted out of this madness. He found it difficult to breathe.

If life had ever taught him anything, it was that any low point could get lower if you weren’t fast enough to quit while you still could.

‘I think it’s better we just forget about this.’

An empty stare, stooping of broad shoulders, a long exhale or was it a sigh? And then rapid movements of the head as if to shake off the bad air, terrible thoughts, a wounded ego, jarred feelings and nausea.

Kaidan had gone through the same phase just a few days ago. He understood.

‘Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever you want, Kaidan. I just thought you still…yeah. It’s ok; I won’t mention this again; you have my word on it.’

And the curtain falls.

In. out. In. out. In. out.

Sometimes, if you hold off your breath, you can push back the nausea and keep it at the end of your throat until you can get yourself to a bathroom and throw up till you can’t tell your inside from the outside.

Out. Out. Out. You’re lucky if you break down before you choke on your sobs and vomit.

Kaidan hadn’t felt lucky in a long, long time. 

**Author's Note:**

> The chapters will be extremely short because I decided to have an elliptical presentation for this story. The style is kind of experimental, and many things are just hinted at and many questions remain unresolved. I blame my short story course for it. ;)


End file.
